Ex-Priest Sentenced in Sex Case

A defrocked priest who admitted having sex with dozens of boys today pleaded guilty to child pornography and other charges and was sentenced to 20 years at hard labor.

The plea, part of an agreement with prosecutors, came as trial was to open for 40-year-old Gilbert Gauthe. As part of the bargain, prosecutors dropped the most serious charge, aggravated rape--sodomy of a boy under 12 years of age. It carried a mandatory life sentence. Gauthe said in a 78-page deposition that while a priest he engaged in oral sex and sodomy with young boys--some of them altar boys--and some girls. He said the encounters took place in his van, at the rectory, at a camp and in a confessional.